What we leave behind

What struck me too was how little we leave."

God, how true this is. I saw it first hand when we whittled Uncle Bob down from a 3 bedroom house to a 1 bedroom efficiency to what we could haul away in our cars. Again with Dad. What is left? Some furniture? Some letters? Dishes? A class ring? Once the knowledge of who these things belonged to is lost, they cease to have meaning. I inherited things from both of these wonderful men that some would consider junk, but to me, these things are precious because they once belonged to men I loved. Through these things, Dad and Uncle Bob are still part of my life. Once their history is forgotten, what is left?

It is sad what we cling to.

I have a piece of paper that I found in my mother's purse. She had written my phone number on it and then later used it to blot her lipstick. I keep it to remind me that she. was. here. Sometimes I open it up and place it on my cheek as if she is giving me a kiss. But to anyone else, it's just a used up piece of paper.

And Jane. What of Jane? She was born in Ireland, in the middle part of the 19th century. One of twelve children, most of whom left Erie for greener pastures. The girls, all six, came to America. The boys went to Australia and America, save William that we know for sure who stayed in Thurles. And can you imagine their mother? Losing most of her children to the new worlds? Once they left, rarely did they return, most certainly they did not come back from Australia. I can only find where Jane went back once after Willie died. Her sisters pooled their money and sent Jane, John, and JWF back to Ireland to get her mind off things, as if a trip "home" only to leave again would help.

During a crossing to America, she was in steerage. She was traveling with her niece, as the story goes, and it was so rough, that they drank the holy water they had brought with them from Ireland so to preserve their souls should the boat sink.

She arrived in the US the same year the Statue of Liberty was dedicated. I wonder what she thought as she entered New York Harbor. She worked as a domestic for a time before marrying another Irish immigrant she had met here, a carpenter, from a town not fifty miles from her own. She had two sons and a daughter. Her husband had a stroke and had to give up his business and work for the New York Botanical Gardens. Her children were industrious. Her oldest child had his first job lighting the candles in the local Jewish Synagogue on Saturday nights.

She must have been smart and good with math. She and her sisters started their own loan company. Banks wouldn't lend money to Irish immigrants, so Jane and her sisters did. They charged interest and saved and loaned and saved and loaned. By the time Mimi and Poppy moved to Louisville, she had enough money that she loaned them what they needed to buy their house on Dorothy Avenue.

She owned the apartment building in which she lived, so she made money from the renters. I can imagine that she did not tolerate late rent payments.

She looks hard in her pictures. All who knew her, from MJW to Dad to Uncle Bob, said that she was not a "nice" grandma. Not mean exactly, but not warm and fuzzy. She meant business.

She certainly was not sentimental. She burned family pictures so no one would "laugh at how funny we looked," as she told MJW. She roasted red peppers in that same furnace, holding them in the fire until the skin was black and blistered and peeled off the meat with ease. Says MJW, "They were delicious."

She buried her son, Willie, when he was seven years old, dying at the end of July of a rheumatic heart. She buried her daughter, Margaret, when she was in her 30s, dying in child birth. Jane was with her through the labor and could not do anything but watch helplessly as her daughter slipped away.

She raised Margaret's children, living with them, while their father, a fireman, worked long hours. She must have been religious. One of the grandchildren she raised became a priest.

What is left of Jane? Only her name on some documents and a marker in Calvary Cemetery in Queens and the stories about her that keep her alive through the telling. I think that is why I write my life for people to read. So that when I am gone, there will be something left, and I will live once again when my words are read.